The Grandmaster

Wong Kar Wai brings his intoxicating visual lyricism and swooningly romantic sensibility to the martial-arts genre with this sumptuously stylized, ten-years-in-the-making action epic. Tony Leung stars as Ip Man—the legendary Wing Chun master (and trainer of Bruce Lee), who transforms the art of kung fu amid the momentous social upheavals of 1930s China. Featuring fight choreography by the great Yuen Woo-ping, The Grandmaster entwines displays of astonishing kineticism with a poignant variation on Wong’s recurring themes of time, love, longing, and loss.